An affair to remember

Village mela (village fair) was not a new thing but this year Nabla loved maut ka kuwan (‘the well of death’) where transgendered performers (hijrae)danced on the Bollywood tunes between motorcyclists' gravity-defying stunts inside an enclosed circular arena of wooden planks. 

The onlookers stood on a platform circling the top of maut ka kuwan. From there they could see the action below - the dance of life and death. They whistled and jeered at the dancers, applauded the stuntmen on motorbikes and showered money to encourage more daring moves. Some made lewd gesture on sexually explicit moves of the hijare dancers others were held in awe of the whole thing or experienced ecstasy, screaming with joy and/or fright. Nothing in the whole mela matched the excitement created by the near death motorbike manoeuvring of the stuntmen accompanied by sexy dances of the hijrae performers.     

Nabla loved it. He was 20 something, not married, one of many siblings, lived with his parents in the village and commuted daily to a nearby town to work on motorcycle workshop. The mela lasted three days, the performers packed up and went away. Nabla craved for more. He could not wait for a whole year for the dancers to comes back. With some money in his pocket and a few jolly friends, he went to a bigger town to see a mujra* (dance) theatre in order to relive the experience he has at maut ka kunwan. 

He fell in love with Shadi, one of the dancers in the first show he went to. He followed her to her shows in different cities, made his presence felt and won her over by offering companionship. Her manager allowed Nabla to join the group as long as he didn’t create problems in the business. For them he was an extra pair of hands. A useful man who could run errands, provide protection to the dancers and help run the shows. 

The theatre group was his new home. He moved in with Shadi but their relationship was not legally recognised. One day, the police raided her house, arrested them for illegal sexual relations and brought them to the police station. Strange as it may sound, the police inspector summoned a local mosque imam to perform their nikah. They were now legally wedded and set free. Some believe that the whole episode was orchestrated by Shadi and that the inspector was, in fact, one of her clients. Months after he had disappeared, Nabla visited his parents back in the village. He told them the whole story and managed to convince them to accept Shadi as their daughter-in-law. Shadi moved in with Nabla’s family in the village. Nabla went back to work in the town as a motor mechanic.

Were they trying to escape the glamorous life of dance that had dazzled Nabla in the first place? Was his romance with it over? Were they trying to be 'normal' in the society? 

The house in the village was small and overcrowded. Shadi was not happy. She felt imprisoned. Nabla had no means to rent a separate house. Shadi went back to her theatre company and resumed work as a dancer. Nabla was upset. His family decided to get marry to a cousin in the village. Half of the family did not come to the wedding because of an inheritance dispute. Nabla himself was said to be 'physically there but mentally absent'. He was texting Shadi the whole time. He didn’t even spend the first night with the new wife. Instead, he took a bus to the town to be with Shadi again. 

Now, he visits the village from time to time and tells exciting stories of his glamorous life in showbiz, including how they once got robbed and beaten up on their way to a show at a wedding in a village. These are tales of a never ending jouissance in maut ka kuwan of life.

*These are stage performances in hired venues where young female artists perform sexually explicit dances for hundreds of men in the audience who are drawn mainly from local towns and adjoining villages. These theatre groups are cooperative style ‘companies’ of a few artists and their managers who travel as a group from town to town to perform their shows. The groups also perform mujra dances at weddings and private parties.